How to Replace Foodhub With Direct Online Ordering
Foodhub is a delivery marketplace. A customer opens the app, picks your restaurant from a list of local takeaways, orders, and Foodhub takes a commission on that order. Foodhub also keeps the customer's details. If that person orders from you every Friday for a year, you still don't have their email address, and you can't send them anything unless it goes through Foodhub.
That's the whole problem, really. You're paying a cut on every order to rent access to customers who already know and like your food.
Replacing Foodhub with direct online ordering means those customers order from your own website or app instead. The order goes straight to your kitchen, you pay a platform fee rather than a cut of each order, and the customer data is yours. Most restaurants don't do it in one go. They build the direct channel, push regulars towards it, and let Foodhub shrink in the background.
Why restaurants leave Foodhub
Commission is the obvious one. Foodhub pitches itself as cheaper than the bigger marketplaces, and for some operators it is. But a lower commission is still a commission, and it's charged on every single order, including the ones from people who would have found you anyway. A regular who orders twice a week through Foodhub is costing you money that a direct order wouldn't.
Run the numbers on your own figures. Take your weekly Foodhub order count, multiply it by your average order value, then by the commission rate on your statement. Multiply that by 52. That's what the channel costs you per year, before any promotions or discounts you fund on top. Most owners know roughly what they pay Foodhub each month. Fewer have looked at the annual figure, and it usually changes how they think about the problem.
Then there's the data. Foodhub knows who your customers are, what they order, how often, and when they stopped. You see an order come in with a name and an address, and that's about it. You can't text a lapsed customer a voucher. You can't email your top 200 regulars about a new menu. You can't even tell, with any accuracy, who your top 200 regulars are.
Price comparison is the third issue. On a marketplace, your restaurant sits in a scrolling list next to every other pizza, curry and kebab shop within delivery range. Customers flick between them and compare prices side by side. That pushes you towards discounting, and the discounts come out of your margin, not Foodhub's. On your own site, nobody is showing them the place down the road at £2 cheaper.
And you don't control the platform. If Foodhub changes its fees, changes how listings are ranked, or starts promoting a competitor more heavily in your area, your order volume moves and you find out after the fact. A restaurant that gets most of its online orders from one marketplace has handed a big chunk of its revenue to someone else's product decisions.
What direct ordering actually is
A customer goes to your website, or opens your app, and orders. The order lands on your system. There's no marketplace in the middle taking a percentage.
You still pay for the technology. Direct ordering platforms charge a fee, and card processing has its own cost. The difference is how the cost behaves as you grow. A commission goes up with every order you take. A platform fee mostly doesn't. At 50 orders a week the gap between the two might not be huge. At 500 a week it's a lot of money.
You also get the customer's contact details and order history, with their consent, on your own system. That's what makes the rest of this work. Getting an order is fine. Getting a second order from the same person without paying anyone a cut is where direct ordering pays for itself.
Making the switch
Pick a platform
You need branded online ordering, a website (or a way to add ordering to the one you have), and ideally an app. Orders need to reach the kitchen without someone retyping them.
That last part matters more than people expect. If online orders come in on a separate tablet and staff copy them into the till, you've added work and a place for mistakes. Wrong items, missed modifiers, orders that sit unseen for ten minutes on a busy Friday.
Flipdish is the one we'd point UK and Irish restaurants to first. It does branded online ordering, restaurant websites and mobile apps, and it has its own POS system. Online orders arrive on the same system that handles your in-store trade, so there's no second screen and no copying orders across.
Sort out your menu and prices
Your direct menu doesn't have to be a copy of your Foodhub menu. Plenty of operators use the switch to tidy things up. Cut the dishes nobody orders. Get proper photos taken. Rewrite the descriptions that were dashed off when you first listed on the marketplace.
Pricing is worth a proper look too. A lot of restaurants nudge their marketplace prices up to cover commission. If you've done that, your direct prices can come down a bit and you'll still make more per order than you do on Foodhub. Customers notice when the same meal is cheaper on your own site. It's one of the easiest reasons you can give them to switch.
Don't go mad with it, though. You don't need to undercut yourself by 20%. A small, visible difference, or a free side on direct orders, usually does the job.
Tell your customers, repeatedly
This is where most switches stall. You launch the site, nobody knows it exists, and the Foodhub orders keep coming in as before. Your Foodhub customers have already ordered from you. They like the food. They just don't know there's another way to order it, and the marketplace isn't going to tell them.
So tell them, and keep telling them:
- Put a card or flyer in every delivery bag with your website address and, ideally, a QR code and a first-order discount
- Mention direct ordering in your Foodhub listing bio, if the platform lets you
- Post about it on Instagram and Facebook, more than once. One post gets missed.
- Give people a reason to try it. A discount on the first direct order, or a free item, is enough to break the habit for most people.
- Change the ordering link on your Google Business Profile so people searching for you land on your own site, not a marketplace
- Put the web address on your shopfront, your menus and your receipts
The bag insert does the most work. Everyone who gets one has ordered from you within the last hour and is about to eat your food. You won't find a better moment to ask.
Brief your staff
Anyone answering the phone or working the counter should be able to explain it in a sentence. Something like: "If you order on our website it's a bit cheaper for you, and more of the money goes to us rather than the app." That's it. People like supporting a local business when it's easy to do, and most customers have never thought about who takes a cut.
Delivery drivers are worth briefing too. They're the last person the customer sees.
Track what's happening
Keep an eye on three numbers:
- Direct orders per week
- Average order value on direct compared with Foodhub
- How many direct customers come back and order again
Look at them weekly at first. Direct orders as a share of your total online orders is the figure that tells you whether this is working. If it's moving up month on month, you're doing it right, even if Foodhub is still bringing in a decent volume.
Running both for a while
You don't have to switch Foodhub off on day one, and most restaurants shouldn't. Cut it cold and you'll probably see a drop in orders while your direct audience catches up. That's a rough few weeks for no real reason.
What tends to work better is something like this. Launch your direct channel and get it working properly. Spend a few weeks running promotions that push people towards it. Then start pulling back on any discounts you fund on Foodhub, so the price gap between the two channels widens a little. Check your Foodhub figures every quarter and decide whether it's still pulling its weight.
Some restaurants keep Foodhub at a reduced level for good. It does bring in new customers, people who've never heard of you and are scrolling for something to eat. That's worth something. The trick is making sure a customer who finds you on Foodhub once doesn't keep ordering through Foodhub for the next two years. The bag insert and the first-order discount are how you catch them.
Look at it this way. Paying a commission to win a new customer is a marketing cost you can defend. Paying the same commission on their fortieth order is just a tax.
Foodhub vs direct ordering
| Factor | Foodhub | Direct ordering (Flipdish) |
|---|---|---|
| Cost structure | Commission per order | Flat platform fee |
| Customer data ownership | Foodhub owns it | You own it |
| Marketing to past customers | Not possible | Fully possible |
| Repeat customer loyalty | Foodhub's | Yours |
| Price visibility vs competitors | Direct comparison | Not compared |
| Order volume predictability | Subject to algorithm | You control it |
Where Flipdish fits
Flipdish gives you the parts you need to take orders directly: a branded website, a mobile app, payments, and a POS system that takes in-store, online and phone orders on one system.
Once customers are ordering direct, the AI marketing tools use your order data to win back people who've stopped ordering and to nudge regulars into ordering more often. You don't have to sit down and write a campaign every week. This is the bit Foodhub can't give you, because on Foodhub the customer list isn't yours.
The AI phone agent answers the phone and takes orders automatically. For a lot of takeaways the phone is still a big channel, and it's often the first thing to suffer on a busy night. If the phone rings out, some of those customers open a marketplace app instead.
If you're taking a good share of your orders through Foodhub and want more of them coming in directly, Flipdish covers the whole move in one place. The online ordering pricing page sets out what it costs, so you can put it next to your Foodhub statements and compare.
Every customer who orders direct is one you can reach again without paying anyone for the privilege. Every Foodhub order is one you're renting.